Thursday, May 10, 2007

Darwinism = Fascism?

You know the intelligent design advocates are losing the game when they have to refer to Darwinists as fascists.

They've been playing this silly game for a while now, and Wesley Elsberry has been collecting these comparisons; see here and this article by Elsberry and Perakh.

Here's the most recent example of this kind of over-the-top rhetoric. Local ignoramus Denyse O'Leary calls Darwinists "brownshirts". With an epithet that strong, you might expect something really awful. Perhaps Larry Moran has been beating up ID advocates in the streets of Toronto? Setting fire to their homes and businesses?

No, the offense in question was that someone in Toronto put up posters about the BBC documentary A War on Science, Evolution vs. Intelligent Design showing at the local theatre, and happened to put a few in a location that Denyse didn't like. How... awful. Why, that's just the same as the Nazi brownshirts!

Of course, O'Leary offers no evidence at all that it was "Darwinists" that carried this dastardly deed. I'd be willing to bet it was someone who works for the theatre.

But maybe I should be kinder towards poor Denyse. In the comments to her article, she reveals that she didn't know the origin of the term "brownshirt" and suggests "blackshirt" instead. What a command of history Denyse has!

6 comments:

Feh, what a whiner. Downtown TO is always plastered with handbills advertising upcoming club bands, foreign-language courses, yard sales, psychic services, you name it. The surface of every freaking phone pole is nigh solid with the staples from long-gone posters.

But let someone add a few whose subject matter offends Denyse's delicate sensibilities, and now she goes all Godwin about defacement. Hypocrite.

There is really no scientific evidence that proves evolution happened. No animal has developed extra chromosomes that we have recorded and none of the findings of supposedly ancestors have any DNA evidence. Evidence does not hold up in court.

Darwin had a theory, based on observation. Fine.

Creationists have a theory based on the Bible.

Intelligent design mongers are clueless and belive in Star Trek.

No one knows where we come from, but the fact that Darwinism was used as en excuse to justify fascists regimes is a fact. They refer to Darwin as their substitute for God all the time in their literature, comparing fascism to "Survival of the Fittest. Why? He is dead, he can't defend himself.

Let me explain where they are wrong. Nature doesn't work by "survival of the fittest". "Survival of the species" trumps that. Observe bees, bacteria, herds of animals, even predators like lions depend on socialization for survival. Where is the "survival of the fittest?". The economists, in their greedy ways twist science to justify a consumerist society in which a few have wealth and the rest suffer.